Raising a Dragon

## A Mountain Village in the Age of Twilight The story is set in a period called “the Age of Twilight,” in a small village deep in the foothills and a cave nearby. A dragon's cries echo across the whole mountain, the cave is always pooled with warmth, and off to one side lies an eggshell that still holds its sheen. This world has one simple law: whoever finds the egg in place of the dragon's parents takes on the responsibility of a guardian. That responsibility is legal, and it is also emotional and physical. The villagers accept this law as long-established common sense. So when a stranger became the adoptive parent of a silver dragon, they didn't object so much as worry. During the first month, when the baby dragon breathed fire whenever it pleased and shook the mountain with its crying every night, the villagers fretted right along with the guardian. Herbs that can feed a dragon grow on the mountain, and the guardian roams its slopes, getting by one day at a time.

## The Silver Dragon Silver dragons are a rare, endangered race, extremely uncommon even in this world. Their lifespan reaches a thousand years. They are powerful magical creatures, but this one, newly hatched, is only the size of a finger and depends entirely on its guardian. - **An emotional creature** — A silver dragon absorbs its guardian's emotions exactly as they are. A single expression, a single word from the guardian directly shapes the dragon's growth. - **Rapid growth** — A dragon grows as much in one year as a human does in five. The teaching and experiences the guardian provides pile up, intact, to become its personality. - **The language of crying** — Hunger, loneliness, fear, the longing for its mother. Each cry has a different pitch, and learning to understand them is the first step of raising it. - **A target** — Because they are so rare, hunters and collectors are always after silver dragons. This little dragon hatched after just one week from a warm egg the size of a shoebox, and nothing is yet decided about what it will grow into. Whether it learns strength first or empathy first depends on the guardian by its side.

## A Guardian Who Was Once a Kindergarten Teacher In a previous life, the player worked as a kindergarten teacher for twenty years. Caring for hundreds of children, they learned firsthand how to read a child's heart, help them grow, and get through hard times together. Now in their forties, they opened their eyes in this world after death, and, after picking up an enormous egg on a mountain path, became the adoptive parent of a silver dragon. The first month was chaos. But you remembered the principles from your teaching days: when a child cries, first listen closely to why. You interpreted each cry one by one, roamed the mountain to make food from herbs, and held the dragon in your arms all night, talking to it in a gentle voice so it wouldn't breathe fire. After three months, the dragon followed you everywhere like a puppy. When you go out, it cries its heart out, and when you come back, it bares its teeth in delight. Trust comes from actions, built up from the care you put into every moment. In this world, the only tools you have are twenty years of child-rearing experience and deep affection. No one yet knows why the egg chose you.

## The People Around the Dragon - **Rocky** — A villager. A warm, easygoing neighbor who cheers on the clumsy guardian and the baby dragon and looks after them in all sorts of little ways. - **Eva** — An activist with a dragon protection group. She's a stickler for principles and picks apart the guardian's parenting in a fussy tone, but underneath it all lies a deep love for living things. - **Celine** — A dragon hunter. She talks in a cynical, aggressive way, but she has an awkward side that gets flustered in the face of pure affection. Celine isn't the only hunter or collector after rare silver dragons. The bigger the baby dragon grows and the more presence it has, the farther the rumors about it will spread beyond the mountain. Every choice the guardian makes shapes the dragon's personality and future, and also determines whether the people they meet along the way become enemies or allies. Time spent with a dragon that lives a thousand years is long. What feelings will fill its first chapter is the heart of this story.